Thank you channler.

so you are in agreement with the Boserup theory then.

Err.. if thats what you said sure...

Remeber I'm just the un-educated hic from North Carolina where all we have is tobacco and... err... well thats about it.. Oh and trees too!

NC also has a large array of rocks and minerals. supposedly like the state with the largest variety.

we had a gold rush in Nc O.o

lol. k it offtopic i know. just beat me with a very soft pillow. I'll accpet that as my punishment

WHOA!! WE HAVE ROCKS!?!

Hehe, I'll stop now..

But yes, man will always overcome nature (IMO) but never each other

I disagree, I think man simply won't naturally become over-populated. It is extremely rare for any creature to overpopulate an area to the point of endangering itself. An exception is mold, but that doesn't really count because mold is outside the idea of habitat, or food chain. Human's exist within the food chain, and when animals become over-populated it is because of human intervention, in every case. When a crisis has occured, billions of minds will not be working toward the same thing. Animals have never learned to deal with crisis that threaten extinction, because either the crisis never came into full eclipse, or they became extinct. Man can't conquer nature, and the more it attempts tamper with said nature, to intervene, the more it faces nature's recoil. No, human invetion works like this, one step forward, three steps back. For every 10 million productive things humans have done, there are about 30 million negative things humans did "with the best intentions." Now, it's simply not in accordance with the laws of nature and evolution to exterminate by over-population. The Universe was smarter than that went creating the laws of nature.

and i disagree with your concept.

Yes there is a natural carrying capacity that an ecosystem can handle. and this capacity varies depending on the species. and all species of animals, including humans fit into this. the thing is that no species knows its own carrying capacity they simply keep doing what they are hardwired to do, and that is survive and reproduce.

Now this is what happens, it is all a system of cause and effect, checks and balances per say. Since the system is too complex to look at it in its entirity we will break it down to just a few variables, Primarily because its easier to understand, and secondly because I don't want to be typing for all eternity.

So let's now get technical shall we ^ ^.



Alright, so theres a graph. populations grow exponentially as long as there are enough resources available to support the population, aso assuming resources are infinite, growth will grow exponentially infinitely. this is shown by the blue line in the graph.

We do know that resources are not infinite, so there has to be a limit on resources meaning there has to be a limit in population size. now the black line shows the carrying capacity in a natural environment. the red line shows the exponential growth of a population, but if you not as it nears the carrying capacity growth begins to slow down until it stables out. now this is a very generic model. But it helps us see two things.

1) some organisms such as Bacteria(and you can even say when u see a later char the humans grow this way too) reproduce so rapidly that their growth overshoots the carrying capacity by great quantities. What then happens is that resources are rapidles depleted and the populations dies of until a bit lower than the carrying capacity. it then stabilizes there.
2) other organisms follow the logistic growth, and are usually large and slow reproducing animals (elephants, Whales, etc)

Alright so the part where population is "stable" is very generic and it really looks more like this


In this example we have hares(prey) and lynxs(predator). as prey population increases, you see an increase in predator population. this makes sense since there is more food available and can support a larger population of lynxs. Now as the predator population begins climbing, the prey population begins dropping for ovbious reasons(i.e. predation, and also a depletion of their food source, grasses and other plants), what happens next is that the lynx population begins to decline because the amount of prey has decreased and the amount available is not enough to maintain the current population, so we see fewer cubs living to adulthood, and some adults dying from starvation. Also another factor here is disease. Disease spreads faster when organisms are grouped closely together. the larger the population the greater the chance of interaction between individuals and more chance for the transmittence of an antigen.

This system of checks and balances stops populations from going way out of control, and does so by keeping raising and lowering the Birth and death rates.

So with the exception of microbes, most populations will never ever excede their carrying capacity. There are however times when nature changes the carrying capacity, say by a natural disaster and the populations numbers plummet, if not enough resources remain a population can entirely die out, and sometimes evena species. so species do do extinct naturally, it is not a solely manmade problem.

So no we leave the realm of wildlife and go into humans. This is a chart of the human population since 4000 BC.


as you see we have had a pretty constant population growing relatively slowly. it is however during the last 1000 years that the human population has undergone a population explosion. now if you tell me this is a solely natural accident then you are just thick headed. over the past 1000 years mankind has gone through the industrial revolution, the creation of machines, also great innovation in the world of hygiene and medicine. We have as mankind knowingly reduced, and sometimes even reduced the checks that keep our population under control. we have eliminated virulent disease, created machines to do work for us, letting us produce more than ever before. and with the development of genetics and biotechnology we have altered our diets, and in some cases overcome the genetic problems that plague our species.

No you saw the population cycle with teh hares and lynx. alright well here is a graph of birth and death rates of sweden and mexico.



Lets just focus on one of the two nations, Sweden. Tis phenomenon has occured only with humans, and is called the demographic transition model.

normally populations have high birth rates and high death rates. reason being that a family would have lots of children to ensure some survived to adult hood. alright, well thanks to technology and civilization we have managed to decrease the death rate, since we can extend lif with medicines, and also ensure that more children will live to adulthood. This causes family size to decrease since we no longer need to worry about most of the children dieing of. As long as birth rates exceeds death rate, populations will grow. We are now seeing a phenomene which is labeled the 5th step of teh transition model. This is happening in a few european nations where death rates exceed birth rates and we have a population decline. but I digress.

All of this is just to show that we as humans have succesfully increased the carrying capacity. the question is not whether we can keep it going forever becuase thats just not possible. the question is when will we push nature to the max and reach that final carrying capacity. When we reach this capacity, it is not to say we will all die out, but we will instead have a pretty constant population.

So doomedone, you cannot argue that mankind has not modified nature and in doing so, allowed our population to grow so large.

and with this I rest my case.

This post has been edited by Megil Tel-Zeke: Aug 12 2005, 05:26 AM

this is off topic and i dont want to get into this but, holy crap!!!! U guys really do alot of research for somthing that is only a Forum Disscusion!!

You have to know what your talking about before you go in and start giving speeches.

Well, from what I gathered then you don't disagree with me, it's simply unnatural for any species to over-populate, as in to threaten its own extinction. Think of it like this, as many people do. Bacteria eat everything in sight until there's nothing left and then they starve. Therefore, millions, possibly billions of species of bacteria go extinct everyday. Take your armpits, you sweat, then bacteria form especially evolved into eating your sweat. These bacteria are what produce the oder. Now if you don't go out to a location you'd sweat again and wait long enough for the bacteria to finish off your sweat, they'd die. They finish off the resources, but bacteria don't really apply to carrying capacity because they aren't evolve to sustain their own species. Most other organisms live specifically to keep their species alive, and everything is focused on that. Bacteria act as more of a ball-roller, keeping the cycle of life moving, therefore the idea of pushing themselves into their own extinction like they do is not unnatural. It's their job, to break down these nutrients for the organisms.

See, resources don't grow, they fluctuate, depending, really, on how many dead things there are. When a population exceeds its limits, then many will die of starvation, and their bodies broken down to create a new wave of nutrients that will travel through the cycle of life and up the food chain. You need the death to refill the food-chain. That's what makes it so unnatural to over-populate a species into a threatening point, at least threatening on the species as a whole.

bacteria are 4.2 billion years old. and you tell me they are not geared for survival -.- . yes theconsume most of their resource bbut very rarely do the have such massive die off that they die. besides bacteria are among the most succesful organism on this planet as far as survival.


and besides overpopulation doesn't mean that the species threatens its own existence.

That's a myth too.

I must tell you now, I was in a city with a population of millions, and not once did I see children working hard labor. You'll find it very rare compared to what books tell you.

I read a lot about how there are a lot of homeless people. Sure there are, Bangalore is comparable to Chicago in that figure.

India's has a yery young population, unlike the U.S. This big population is good because it ensures able workers in the future. The U.S and what some people like to call developed countries, have a lower birth rate. The population in our nations are becoming older. Sure, this might not happen for a while, but think about it. Do we have the young workers to meet the demands off all the jobs of the future. Our older population is taking a higher percent as we go on.

Oh, and about the monkey thing . . .that's just weird . . .



Wow, we immediately associate Indian farmers as poor.

This post has been edited by gamer10: Aug 12 2005, 03:32 PM

Megil, the way bacteria work fill in a completely different niche in the cycle of life than other life-forms. Bacteria as a whole do not go extinct, but many different strands of bacteria go extinct all the time, and new forms evolve. What's you're left with are well broken-down nutrients. Obviously bacteria would be one the oldest life-forms on this planet because they hold up such a large, important pillar in the cycle of life.

Minque, how is that not what I said? They're investments, they have more children than the family can feed at the mean-time, but by the time they're like nine or ten they can start doing real labour.

What monkey thing?

every organism fills in an individual niche. and theirs is not entirely unique to them. bacteria are phtosynthetic, like plants, and others work as decomposers, a role shared also by fungi. so their niche isn't entirely different from that of any other organism.

the only thing i get that you are saying is that just becuase bacteria are prokaryotes, they are somehow exempt to the rules that are applicable to other living things?

This post has been edited by Megil Tel-Zeke: Aug 12 2005, 06:42 PM

Basically, not exempt, they have different rules. For other animals, the chief reason for them to survive is to continue the existence of their species, and in doing so they continue the existence of their habitat. Bacteria's job is to consume and split off. It's not because they're prokayotes as much as it's just because they're asexual really. This is what I mean, bacteria send a new wave of decomposed goods through the cycle (first into the soil, then into the trees, then into the herbivores, then to the carnivores). The resources available determine the population of the next species, therefore its bacterias main job to keep the entire habitat alive, not just their own species, though their own species survival does mean they will continue to consume, it's basically their job to threaten themselves into extinction by overpopulation. The more they do, the more resources are decomposed, and the more other life-forms can thrive.

Don't disrespect me with a duhr, by the way, I'm trying to explain something to you, you looked like you weren't getting it, so I made it simpler.

sory, i apologize fr that.

also corals, worms, algae, protists. all reproduce asexually as well. are they also following a different set of rules? Shoot plants reproduce asexually as well.

and bacteria can produce sexually, well nearly. bacteria can send the DNa into another bacteria, t ensure genetic diversity.

yes i agree bacteria play a ver important role in the decomposition of materials, and we would be nowhere without them. but it is not their decaying bodies that producse the next source of minerals. bacteria decompose extracellularly, sending enzymes outside their cell membanes and letting the enzyme breakdown the chemicals around them, the bacteria then absorbs the energy released through this decomposition. the chemicals used are just temporary and are then released back into the environment.

A perfect example of this would be the nitrogen fixing bacteria. they are the only organisms on this earth that can turn Nirtogen gas into nitrogenous compounds (ammonie, Nitrates, nitrite) the usually make Nitrates out of the gas by binding it to hydrogen moleculs that are gotten from breaking apart water molecules. the energy released from the water molecule is used by the bacteria, and the transforming of nitrogen to nitrate is simply the bacterias way of getting rid of hydrogen molecules. so its only as a by product the bacteria recycle nutrients. they don't ingest them then die and decompose.

This post has been edited by Megil Tel-Zeke: Aug 12 2005, 06:38 PM

Anyway, back on topic. The point is, and we'll both agree, it's not natural for an animal to threaten itself into extinction by means of over-population. Humans today, however, seem have more children the poorer they are because most developing countries have a system of labour, so more children increases the family's chance of survival. This means basically there are plenty of resources, they simply don't have the means of getting them. The tie in is that humans in developing countries follow a strange version of carrying capacity, where the carrying capacity humans have managed to develop could support billions more humans, and yet so many of us are starving.

yes we agree on that.

also developing countries would still be in the early stages of the demographic transitions model. meaning there would be a high death rate, probably and even higher infant mortality rating, this explains why poorer countries tend to have higher birth rates as well. since families must consider the high probability that most of the children will die from one reason or another, usually disease being the main agent.

actually, I said "poor" farmers to clarfiy, not to say that all indian farmers are poor.

Though most are.

I got one that may or may not work.

Sex-ed in highschool, do you think it should be taught or not? Do you think it should be the parents responsibility to teach sex-ed to their kids? Do you think abstinence needs to be teached only, not condoms, etcetera?

Me: The facts show in schools where abstinence was taught alone, that there was absolutely no change in how much students were having sex (they asked these question in anonymous surveys) and no change in the rate at which STDs and teen pregnancy spread. In schools that don't teach sex-ed at all, there was no change (as they are the control group) In the third party, which represents the majority of school in the United States, that taught everything from options if you get pregnant to abstinence, there was no increase nor decrease in the amount of sex (or at least amount students admitted in the survey) however, the spread of pregnancy and STDs went down considerably. This is one survey, and many more have been done, but generally the final result proven is that teaching abstinence does not work. Teenagers are horny, simply so. Therefore I am in favor of sexual education in school. In my opinion, it works, because herpies frighten me. I refuse to have sex without a condom because I was educated about herpies.

As much as i hate to agree with you doomed you are really right about this.

I mean, since now no one in the US believes the, "If you have sex before your married your going to HELL" thing eduacting people on the problems and disease's ascossiated (and solutions) with that is the best way to counter it.

BTW, can you tell me what schools this survey was done in? Cause.. uh.. the population of the schools really does matter.

Oh and there trying to get kids in sex-ed as early as kindergarden here im my school district. To me that is a BIG NO NO... You tell them that early and they start to want to experiment. Some kids are to young. I mean would you want your 5 year-old learning how to put on a condom!?